“This holiday season, the retail industry estimates stores will lose a whopping $3.5 billion from “return fraud.”

So the media reported. Then, tonight, I watched a programme portraying certain scenarios, cameras and actors set up to see how the public would respond. One depicted a young man on a busy street in the middle of the afternoon, supposedly the worse for alcohol yet attempting to get into his car and drive off. We watched and waited to see how many passers-by, if any, would make an effort to stop him. Heartening to see that most did.

Another was a young Caucasian couple in the park, the guy intimidating the woman, striking her, verbally abusive towards her then the actors were changed to an African-American couple. Many more people stopped to assist the Caucasian woman than they did the black woman but when it came to a young woman abusing her male companion in a like manner, barely anyone paid any attention. Most interviewed later said they “figured he could fight back”. That makes a difference or is abuse still abuse?

The next example was a cashier in a restaurant giving back more change than the patron should have had. Good to see most brought the “error” to her attention while a few walked out with extra money in hand. But we all know that if a cashier gives us less change back than she should we bring it to her attention immediately.

The last scenario took place in a taxi-cab with the driver running racist, homophobic commentary by his passengers, most of whom agreed with him and adding their own like comments, perhaps two who openly did not agree and spoke their mind. Yet all…bar none…swore they were neither racist or homophobic when asked about their responses, later. The programme did take a poll throughout the show, www.abc.com and ended with what the “right responses should have been”. But it’s not that hard, is it? Whether deliberately trying to defraud a retailer with bogus returns, accept more change than you know you are supposed to receive, walk on by someone…anyone…who is verbally or physically abusing another/being abused or listening to the bigot/homophobe dogmatically lay down his/her “law”, isn’t there only one bottom line? If we…each of us…choose not to participate in the solution then we are surely a big part of the problem.

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